Trivia / Doctor Who S30 E17/E18 "The End of Time"

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• Acting for Two: Actually, Acting for over Six Billion — John Simm, primarily through chroma keys and a lot of costume changes, plays every member of the Master Race in addition to the Master himself.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • It was John Simm's idea for the Master to have blond hair.
  • Bernard Cribbins served in the army during World War II and he, too, never killed a man during his service. He insisted that Wilfred not only have the same lack of kills in his past, but also share in his pride for never taking another life.
• Actor-Shared Background: Like Wilfred, Bernard Cribbins served in the army at the end of the Mandate in Palestine.
• All-Star Cast: David Tennant, John Simm, Bernard Cribbins, Timothy Dalton, Catherine Tate, Claire Bloom, June Whitfield, David Harewood and Brian Cox, to name but a few.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Brian Cox as the Ood Elder.
• Completely Different Title: The French title is "La Prophétie de Noël" (The Christmas Prophecy).
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • June Whitfield really did get a handful of David Tennant's bum. Repeatedly. For the realism!
  • See also Reality Subtext below for Tennant's discomfort during the "worst rescue ever" sequence.
  • Matt Smith's spitting over the console in his regeneration scene was due to dust in his mouth; it stayed in the episode on RTD's casting vote.
• One-Take Wonder: The TARDIS console room exploding was done in one take because of the coral pillars being really expensive to redo, so multiple takes was not on the cards.
• Prop Recycling: The two Raxacoricofallapatorians at the bar are the new Slitheen costumes created for The Sarah Jane Adventures rather than the old ones from Series 1. Notably, "The End of Time" was filmed before but broadcast after SJA's "The Gift", where the Slitheen costumes were painted orange to serve as Blathereen.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Alonso is implied to be either gay or bisexual in his cameo appearance; his actor Russell Tovey is also gay. ^note This trope seems to be a favourite for the also-gay Russell T Davies, who went on to create It's a Sin with a whole Cast Full of Gay played by gay actors.
• Reality Subtext: The Doctor complaining about the "WORST! RESCUE! EVER!" is even more justified when one considers that David Tennant had just recovered from surgery to repair a back injury sustained during his run on Hamlet at the RSC in-between shooting his final seasons; the crew ended up using a dummy for the long shots of the Doctor going down the stairs to avoid the risk of re-injuring him, as well as camera tricks in the close-ups, but Tennant's visible discomfort is still readily apparent given he still ended up doing multiple takes of the sequence anyway. Bernard Cribbins jokes that they had to keep him away from Tennant, or else he'd have pushed him down the steps even faster.
• Wag the Director: Four versions of The Doctor's last words were shot, increasing the emotion each time, with The Doctor breaking down and crying on the fourth and final take. Director Euros Lyn figured he'd use the final take, but all parties on set agreed it was a bit too much. David Tennant argued for the third take, feeling that The Doctor being obviously emotional but trying to maintain his composure felt more in-character.
  David Tennant: I just worry if you see him breaking down, it stops you breaking down as well. There's always the danger of that. If that's the final image and you're left with him in total distress, it's pretty grim.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Russell T Davies originally wanted to have the Doctor and the Master swap bodies. Davies decided against given how it would be a weak sendoff for David Tennant, and also because of how similar it was to "New Earth".
  • Donna was originally supposed to appear only in the epilogue for Part Two, giving the Doctor a chance to see that she was enjoying a good life despite losing all memory of her time with him.
  • Davies originally planned for the Master leave an "M" at the scenes of the murders he committed so as to provide a trail for the Doctor to follow. This was dropped when he realised that it had already been established that the Doctor would simply "know" where to find his fellow Time Lord.
  • Patrick Stewart was offered the role of Rassilon.
  • Omega, last seen in "Arc of Infinity", was originally going to appear instead of Rassilon, but the idea was dropped.
  • Abigail Naismith was originally named Alice.
  • Davies considered having the Time Lords in an alliance with the Daleks to show how they had been corrupted. However, Steven Moffat was also planning to bring back the Daleks and expressed his preference for this to be the first Dalek story in a while. Keen not to undermine his successor's first season, Davies abandoned the notion.
  • There was originally a scene where the Doctor actually met Trinity Wells, the American news anchor who had appeared intermittently ever since "Aliens of London". Davies wanted to have Lachele Carl make a proper appearance in the series, but thought it was needless.
  • The Master's original plan was to trap Earth in the Time War in place of Gallifrey.
  • Originally, much of the Vinvocci's faces retained their natural human skin tones, but it was now decided that they should be completely green; sequences featuring the aliens which had already been recorded would be computer-tinted to match the revised look.
  • In an early draft of the script, Davies had the Doctor address the "half-human" statement the Eighth Doctor made in the TV Movie, dismissing it as "a forty-eight-hour bug". The line was cut by Davies for several stated reasons, including the fact it would have confused viewers who were only familiar with the events of "Human Nature".
  • One prominent element dropped during scripting was a subplot where the Doctor tries to convince the "Danes-Master" (the copy of the Master who had been Danes, the Naismiths' butler) to fight against the Time Lord.
  • Davies had originally intended for the Tenth Doctor to sacrifice himself for a complete stranger, but decided that Wilf should be the person the Doctor saved as he developed the story.
  • Matt Smith was originally supposed to have just one line, but Moffat took the opportunity to give him a monologue.
• Word of God:
  • According to Russell T Davies, the scene where Captain Jack is in an alien bar is in a city named Zaggit-Zagoo on the planet Zog. This is an in-joke referencing one of Davies' statements regarding his approach to the series that "no-one cares about Zogs attacking Zogs on the planet Zog".
  • Davies's book The Writer's Tale revealed that the mysterious woman who appears throughout the episode, and later gives the Doctor a clue as to how to defeat the Time Lords once and for all, is the Doctor's mother.
• Working Title: The Immortality Gate and The Final Days of Planet Earth for Part One (with the second part initially being called The End of Time). Davies came to dislike the latter when he saw it onscreen, and felt the scale of the story required using "Part One" and "Part Two", making it the first story to do so in twenty years.

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